[page 17]
Lessons of the
1970s
N JULY 1976, in a council by-election in
Lewisham, South London, two fascist candidates
won a combined 44% of the vote. The National Front (NF) had recently split in a row over who should be top Führer, and a new formation called the National Party also stood. One united fascist candidate would have probably won the seat - the Labour candidate polled 43%.
In this period NF leader John Tyndall was boasting that his organisation was now the "third main political party in Britain". ' Indeed the various misfits who stood as fascist candidates were notching up some spectacular electoral successes. At the 1977 Greater London Council elections they polled 120,000 votes - including 20% in Hackney South and 19% in Bethnal Green. This was more than the Liberals and higher than Mosley polled in the 1930s.
They were also organising a series of marches to - as Hitler had put it - "burn into the little man's soul the conviction that although a little worm he is part of a great dragon" Yet by 1979, the "well oiled Nazi machine" the NF leaders boasted about had been reduced to a smouldering wreck. At that year's general election, despite standing nationwide with party political broadcasts, they received a puny 1% of the vote.
It was a fitting touch of irony that one of the major turning points in their fortunes was the battering they received from thousands of anti-fascist demonstrators when they tried to march through that same Lewisham council ward one year later.
N EXAMINATION OF the rise,
A against and demise of the NF
1970s is useful for those battling racism and fascism today.
The NF was launched in 1968. Leader of a number of small Nazi sects came together and agreed to lock up their uniforms, erase their Hitler tapes and present a more 'respectable' image.
Their main tool from Racism is rooted in the capitalism itself - a theory bondage and looting of 16 • March/April 1993
struggle in the against
the start was racism.
history and nature of to justify the imperialist whole peoples. Given
IsSons
anti-fascists
of
the
and fall of the National Front.
Britain's imperial past it is inevitable that some of the racialist prejudices of capitalism percolate down into sections of the middle class and more politically backward workers. However, when workers move into action to defend their rights, if correct anti-racist policies are fought for, the conditions are then created for racial differences and prejudices to be overcome. It is not for nothing that the motto of the workers movement has always been 'unity is strength'. Nonetheless the ruling class will always try to cut across working , class struggle by injecting poisonous doses of racism into the social bloodstream.
In 1968 the 'rivers of blood' outbursts by Enoch Powell were a calculated attempt to set back the growing opposition within the labour movement to Wilson's 1964-70 government. Later, in 1912, a massive campaign was launched against Ugandan Asians supposedly 'invading the country. This was an attempt, this time, to undermine the waves of industrial action that were overwhelming the Heath government and that eventually drove it from office.
The NF gained sustenance from the racist propaganda of the ruling class. They claimed to be recruiting up to 250 members a month in 1973. They polled 16% in a Birmingham by-election and 13% in council elections in Leicester and Blackburn. Beatings and arson attacks against black and asian people reached record levels. But it was under the following Labour government that the NF had its biggest successes already mentioned.
Labour had been elected on a radical programme - "an irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people" ". At first the mood was 'give them a chance'. Workers caught their breath after the exertions against Heath.
But this was a government of counter-reforms. Unemployment trebled and real living standards fell. IMF sponsored cuts slashed deep incisions into health, education, and housing. A widespread cynicism against the Labour government developed. Yet the trade union tops worked tirelessly to hold back any movement in defence of living standards. They were largely successful for three years.
[page 18]
This was the cue for the ruling class to again play the race card. In April 1976 the gutter press whipped themselves into a frenzy, this • Asian students were kited to death by racists in East London and another killed in Southall. A hundred racists attacked 12 Asians outside a mosque in Barking. The National Front became even more confident and gained further support. But now the racist propaganda, attacks and NF activity acted as 'whip of counter-revolution' and a massive movement started to unfold. Anti-racist and anti-fascist committees sprung into activity and 10,000 marched in Blackburn and Bradford. Southall trades council mobilised 7,000 at three days notice, and a number of large marches took place in East London. This movement began to be reflected within the Labour Party. At the 1976 party conference a Labour Party Young Socialists (LPYS) inspired resolution was passed. This called, amongst other demands, for the formation of local labour movement anti-fascist and anti-racist committees, the expulsion of fascists from the trade unions, and Labour councils to ban the fascists from using council property. In November 1976, at the instigation of the LPYS representative on the national executive committee, the Labour Party organised 30,000 on a national march against A few years earlier the dominant idea in the labour movement had been to ignore the racists. 'Don't give them too much publicity and they will go away'. At the same time Labour ministers gave credence to racist arguments on immigration. Home secretary Roy Jenkins spoke of the need to limit "the ammount of immigration the country can absorb".
'. Bob Mellish, Labour MP for Bermondsey, in a speech cheered on by the Tories, spoke of black fascists' and on immigration declared, 'enough is enough' Many on the left, in particular the Communist Party which still had a significent influence in the labour movement then, argued for the broadest possible 'alliance'
against racism and fascism. They advocated a 'moral crusade' including church leaders, Liberals and, if possible, even Tories. This ignored the fact that racism breeds social grievances. Job queues, housing waiting lists and rotting inner cities are all blamed by the racists on black 'immigrants'. Blacks and Asians - who in fact face the worse conditions - are made the scapegoats for the poverty shortages created by the capitalist system. In the 1970s the Militant-led LPYS were the only official section of the movement who fought for a clear class approach to opposing racism and fascism. They also were the first to take the question up, organising a national campaign and demonstration held in Bradford in 1974. While not opposed to alliances in concrete action against the fascists with Liberals or even TAMAR PARTY UG SOCALISTS * SE WORLD UNT LPYS contingent at Lewisham, 1977. Tories (if they could be found), a political alliance with elements who base themselves on capitalism is a fatal mistake. Appeals for 'tolerance' and 'more understanding of cultural differences' do not defend a single job, build new homes or improve the health and education services. Instead the LPYS fought for socialist policies to tackle unemployment and poverty and undermine the basis for racism. How to respond to the fascist demonstrations?
organised a series of provocative rallies and 'HROUGHOUT THIS PERIOD the Front parades. The importance of the demonstrations to the fascists is clear from the words of John Tyndall: "I believe our great marches, with drums and banners, have a hypnotic effect on the public and an immense effect in solidifying the allegiance of our followers" The question was posed of how to respond Every time the to the fascist demonstrations. fascists announced their intention to march Militant raised that they should be met with a massive resistance as at Cable Street in 1936. Then Mosley's Brownshirts were routed by 250,000 workers rallying around the slogan, "They Shall Not Pass'.
Up to 1976 the turnout on the counter-demos to the NF numbered hundreds rather than thousands. They were dominated by the various student revolutionary' sects that orbit the outer reaches of the labour movement. The turnout on these earlier demos were insufficient to halt Moreover, the sects'
the fascists.
approach of failing to differentiate between the state and the fascists led not to stopping the NF marches March/April 1993 • 17
[page 19]
but to a series of futile and counterproductive battles with the police.
But from 1976 growing numbers were mobilising. At Wood Green in April 1977, 4,000 people, including large contingents from the black, Jewish and Cypriot communities, attempted to halt 800 fascists. An enormous police operation defended the NF but were unable to protect them from a barrage of eggs, tomatoes, smoke bombs and other more solid objects.
The NF's next national march was to be their denouement at Lewisham. In the run-up to the march the lory press insisted that they had, like anyone else', the democratic 'right to march'. But the role of fascism is to smash all the rights won by the struggle of the working class. Every vestige of democracy would be annihilated. There can be no question of 'free speech' or a platform for fascism. Lewisham saw an unprecedented police mobilisation including the deployment of paramilitary style equipment, such as riot shields, for the first time in Britain. The local anti-fascist campaign, ALCARAF, dominated by the Communist Party, announced a counter-march. The police promptly banned it from within a mile of the This was accepted without protest by the ALCARAF leaders.
At the end of the counter-march stewards appealed to the demonstrators to go home, or alternatively attend a special church service to pray against racism. The vast majority preferred to put their faith in more practical action. Thousands converged on the New Cross assembly point.
The fascists were penned by a massive crowd. The police launched a series of forays to try and clear them a route. Horses charged the occupied by the LPYS contingent but section the demonstration stood its ground, surged through the police lines, and set about dealing with the fascists. The remnants of the NF parade that escaped were set upon by black youth as they reached Lewisham High Street. •HE LEWISHAM EVENTS rocked the ruling T class, Militant has always waked d hat the capitalists are prepared to shelve 'democracy' in order to defend their system. In 1973 their main mouthpiece The Times had supported the military coup - complete with Nazi techniques of mass murder, torture and concentration camps - against the left wing Allende government in Chile. Up to Lewisham they were prepared to cultivate the Front as a useful auxiliary tool against the workers' movement in Britain. Ine Times tried to whitewash the NF as a "movement of misguided individuals preoccupied with the decline of the country". They even demanded that the NF be given the 'right to reply' after a hard hitting Labour Party broadcast attacking them as Nazis. Yet soon the capitalist spokespeople were singing a new tune. They were terrified 18 & March/ April 1993 The Nazi past of Tyndall (right) exposed. that the NF were provoking a mass countermovement that they would not be able to control. When the NF announced they were to march in Manchester the North West region of the TUC called for a mobilisation of 20,000 workers to stop them. Others in the labour movement called for the march to be banned. The Labour government duly invoked the 1936 public order act. This had been introduced in 1936 after the battle of Cable Street. While Mosley was to continue with his marches police protection, workers' demonstrations and anti-fascist mobilisations in the East End of London were subject to a blanket ban. Now it had the same affect. NF leader, Martin Webster, was allowed a one-man march surrounded by 2,000 police. Another 5,000 police escorted 500 fascists through Ardwick along a secret pre-arranged route. The whole area was surrounded by police roadblocks who turned back anti-fascists'
cars and buses.
But while attempting to place obstacles in the path of the anti-fascist movement, the capitalists also began to undermine the Front itself. Lurid stories about the NF leaders' 'evil, sleazy Nazi' past began appearing in the press. The Daily Express, whose racist outbursts against 'immigrants' had aided the growth of the NF, led the chorus.
The tide had now turned on the industrial front.
In addition the Tory leadership made a conscious decision to steal some of their support. Thatcher, I aping Enoch Powell's rantings a decade earlier,
[page 20]
I spoke of the country being "swamped by people with a different culture." But it was the organised workers' movement that really tightened the noose around the NF. the trade unions, the National Union of Railwaymen announced that they would expel fascists (although they later retreated under a barrage from the Tory press) and the GMWU launched a campaign.
Striking lorry drivers picketed the garage of Monmouth NF chairman. In the Longbridge car plant 200 workers walked out, forcing management to transfer a fascist worker. In February 1978 thousands of youth led by the LPYS overwhelmed a Young National Front rally in Birmingham. The tide had now turned on the industrial front. Strikes by firemen, at Grunwicks where workers rallied to support super-exploited Asian workers, at Fords, and the 'winter of discontent' in the public sector, dealt the NF severe body The traditional base for fascism is the petit bourgeois. Hitler mobilised the small shopkeepers, small farmers and others facing bankand pauperism after the failure of the workers' leaders to provide any answers. But the post- war economic upswing had whittled down these layers.
Therefore, the NF had been forced to base themselves primarily on the more politically backward sections of the working class. This meant their support was very unstable. When the workers movement re-emerged into activity, many workers and youth who had been duped by the Front's radical demagogy, had their eyes opened to a force that could really change their conditions.
I WAs IN the spring of 1978 that the Anti-Nazi League (ANL) held its hirst mass march and carnival. The ANL was an amorphous broad campaign, involving footballers, pop singers, Liberal politicians as well as Labour and trade union leaders.
Recently the ANL has been relaunched. Its leaders claim that in the 1970s it was the ANL that 'defeated the NF" and 'nipped fascism in the bud. This is a distortion of the real The ANL undoubtedly processes in the 1970s.
imagination of large layers captured the of youth and waged an effective propaganda campaign labelling the NF as Nazis. But its success was really a reflection of the mass movement that had been developing for the previous two years. In fact the 'broad' nature of the ANL - whose leaders were not prepared to do anything to upset their celebrity sponsors - began to act as an obstacle to the mobilisation against the fascists themselves.
Throughout the summer of 1978, one of the main targets of the NF was the Brick Lane area in East London.
Bengali workers leaving a local factory were set upon by thugs as they left work. Another incident resulted murder of Altab Ali. The NF attempted to sell papers in the Lane each Sunday. The community put up a massive resistance. A one-day protest strike mobilised 8,000. There was a mass demonstration of 20,000 and up to 2,000 people occupied the NF sales pitch.
The Bengali youth spearheaded a multi-racial self-defence patrol. Support for the community came from all sections of the labour movement. So much so that TUC general secretary Len Murray visited one of the demonstrations and promised the "TUC would do something in the near future'
The fascists announced they would march down Brick Lane on the same day as the second big ANL carnival. It would have been entirely possible to mobilise the carnival to halt such provocation. But the ANL leaders refused, arguing 'don't let the Nazis spoil our day. This was the same argument initially put up by the Communist Party leaders when they opposed mobilising against Mosley in Cable Street because they were already organising an antifascist demo in Trafalgar Square. They were forced to change under pressure from their rank and file. But the ANL went ahead, mobilising 100,000 anti-fascists to listen to bands while allowing the NF to march without any real challenge.
-NE plunged into disarray. In upstairs rooms 'OLLOWING THE 1979 election debacle the East London pubs opposing factions settled their 'differences' with the aid of ammonia cannisters. Leadership coups, court injunctions and splits followed.
One of the splinters to emerge from the NF rubble named itself the British National Party. Today the BNP have emerged as the main fascist group in Britain. Their membership remains small. Their leader, the same John Tyndall, looks jealously over the channel at the successes of his European cousins.
But the longest recession since the war, mass unemployment, decaying inner cities and the failure of the Labour leaders to provide any has created a breeding ground for answers, racist sentiments upon which the BNP and other fascist groups can feed. The fascists have become increasingly bold in their activities, although up to now they have not dared to organise publicised national marches. The opposition to the 'Blood and Honour concert at Waterloo last September was a serious warning to them. But at the end of January over 500 fascists attempted to attack a Troops Out Movement' march. In Tower Hamlets, just before Christmas, they ransacked the local NALGO There has been a marked increase in office.
fascist inspired beatings and murder of black and asian people. The massive movements against racism and fascism glimpsed in the 1970s can soon again be on the agenda. March/April 1993 • 19
[page 21]
Towards a Lasting
Peace?
year Sinn Fein adopted a new policy document, Towards a
Lasting Peace in Ireland. This, argues Peter Hadden, is a
milestone in the shift to the right at the top of Sinn Fein.
TEN YEARS AGO Sinn Fein
appeared to some to be a
new radical force. Their doctrine
seemed to be one of struggle
- victory through the ballot box
and the armalite. Their propa-
ganda, at least in the urban
areas, was laced with socialist
or semi-socialist rhetoric.
At that time Militant stood firmly against the illusion held by many, that Sinn Fein's rise heralded a breakthrough in politics. We pointed out that their appeal only to the Catholic community meant that at the very best they could become majority representatives of the minority, but always a minority within the state.
Their reply, that 'victory' would be ultimately achieved not just by politics but by armed struggle, was merely perpetuating another myth. Militant has consistently explained over more than two decades that the Provisional IRA's campaign is a dead-end. There is no example in history where individual terrorism has been successful in overthrowing a state.
Rather, the Provisional's methods only give the state the excuse to strengthen itself by introducing draconian legislation and employing brute power on the streets. In Northern Ireland the campaign is doubly doomed because it inevitably alienates and antagonises the majority community, driving them to support the repressive measures introduced to deal
March /April
with it.
Without explicitly saying su, Sinn Fein's new document is a tacit admission of this. Nowhere is there even a hint that the armed struggle can succeed. A special section on 'Armed conflict in Ireland' merely states that "armed struggle is recognised by republicans to be an option of last resort when all other avenues to pursue freedom have been attempted and suppressed".
It goes on: "In these circumstances there is an onus on those who proclaim that the armed struggle is counter-productive to advance a credible alternative". This is true, but there is also an onus on those who advocate armed struggle to say what blowing up police stations - and people's homes, attacking town centres and shooting policemen etc - will achieve, and of this there is not a single word in the document.
PAST RELIANCE ON a false
strategy has run the organisation against a brick wall and has been replaced by a no less false position - not self-reliance but dependence on outside bodies to come to the rescue and solve the problem. This in turn is based on a completely wrong analysis of what the problem is.
Repeatedly this document asserts that the cause of the ongoing conflict is Britain's
determination to hold onto the North. Certainly it was the British ruling class who created the problem by sowing division in Ireland in order to further their own ends.
But since the opening of trade relations with the South in the 1960s, and with the decline of the Northern economy, the British ruling class have had neither economic, military nor strategic reasons for maintaining partition.
That they are unable to withdraw is because the consequences for them would be worse than the existing situation. When Sinn Fein's document talks of "misleading propaganda about a bloodbath should they leave" and when it states that the rights of Protestants would be guaranteed in a united Ireland,
it is flying in the face of reality.
Sinn Fein propose a UN
sponsored inference of all rties to resolve
the conflict.
would backwe states cepted
apitalist united Ireland be the marriage of two ird and poverty-ridden and would never be acby Protestants who fear,
[page 22]
with some justification, that under the likes of Reynolds, they would end up as a discriminated against minority just as the Catholics were in the Northern state. To move down this road would mean civil war and re-partition.
NOT UNDERSTANDING THIS, Sinn Fein argue that is Britain's the only problem refusal to go: the main conclusion of Towards a Lasting Peace in Ireland is that the Dublin government and the SDLP should enlist the support of internato persuade them tional powers to change their minds.
When they come to deal with the role of the European Community (EC), the United Nations (UN), the Conference and Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE), it is clear that those responsible for drafting this document have been entirely bowled over by the events which took place at the end of the 1980s: the collapse of Stalinism, of that time, the long boom and by the false propaganda put forward by the capitalist powers to describe these events and their significance.
is laced So this document with the terminology of capitalism's most optimistic pundits, phrases such as a "completely new phase of history", the "economic re-structuring of Europe after 1992", ', and "the political and economic transformation of Europe" etc. All this rings hollow in the present circumstances of depression in Eastern Europe, prolonged recession in the West, and of attacks on living standards, jobs and services and of growing instability throughout. Fein propose interna- Sinn tional pressure to force Britain a UN sponsored to withdraw, conference of all parties in Northern Ireland to resolve the conflict, and oversight by the CSCE and the UN to check abuses etc. When of democratic rights they say that "participation by the United Nations, as guarantor of respect for international law and fundamental human rights assist discussion to lead could Enniskillen.
¡to positive action", their failure to understand the true role of this and all such capitalist institutions.
The UN does not represent human rights but the interests of the major powers, as was well demonstrated in the Gulf. The current slaughter in Bosnia refutes the document's claim that the UN has "an indispensable role to play in creating a democratic and peaceful future for the whole of Ireland".
Likewise the CSCE has been formed to allow the major European powers to police Europe. The 'international law' upheld by these institutions is, in the last analysis, a straitjacket to hold in check those who oppose the interests of capitalism. There is a way forward but it is not to be found in beseeching the major powers to intervene.
•INN FEINS NEW doctrin of reliance on outside capı talist powers is an acknowledgement that their old strategy they show| of bulding a movement based on the Catholic minority has faltered.
But there is a way forward and it is not to be found in beseeching the major powers to intervene. It is the working class who suffer the effects of the Troubles and the working class who have the power to end them.
In Britain the miners and their supporters have shown the power of mass action. A united mass movement of Catholic and Protestant workers, fighting cuts and poverty, and also combating sectarianism, discrimination and repression, could show a way out.
After two decades of failed solutions there is no point in looking to the existing sectarian and right-wing parties, or to the methods which have failed in the past.
What is neded is a united working class movement fighting for a socialist solution. Instead of looking to the Dublin government it should link with the working class of the South to fight for socialism. And instead of appealing to world capitalism, the working class in the North should look to the working class internationally, seeking their backing and support for the struggle to combat sectarianism and poverty here, March /April 1993 • 21
[page 23]